RONTOMS SUNDAY SESSIONS

The Lower 48 // New Move

"If Hot Fool is an exercise in versatility, then Portland trio the Lower 48 is fit for the task. The band's newest release rubs the indie-rock stamp off its collective wrist to make room for enough genres to cover its entire forearm. The rough-and-tumbling, country-born "Threw It Away" leads right into the Spoon-esque "Jack in the Pulpit." A song later, with "Transition 1," the Lower 48 rides a wave of fuzzed-out surf rock. The band does in three consecutive songs what some struggle to do in three albums' time." -Willamette Week

"Jesse Bettis knows how to get inside your head. A high-order pop technician, he builds songs using only the finest parts, rummaged from the universal pleasure chest of 20th-century sounds—the Beatles and Beach Boys, doo-wop and glam rock—and refinished with modern production gloss. Whether that makes him a well-studied classicist or a historical scavenger depends on how much innovation you demand of your songwriters, but you can't come away from New Move's debut full-length without at least a few tunes tunneling through your heart and burrowing into your brain." -Willamette Week